The campaign to recall Judge Aaron Persky eventually collected enough signatures to qualify for the 2018 ballot.
Photograph: Eric Risberg/AP

The California judge in the Stanford sexual assault case has been recalled from office by local voters, an extremely rare outcome in the US court system and a major victory for activists who waged a two-year campaign against the official.

Judge Aaron Persky faced international scrutiny in June of 2016 after he sentenced the ex-Stanford University student Brock Turner to six months in jail. Turner, whose name became synonymous with campus sexual assault across America, had been convicted of three felonies for assaulting an unconscious woman outside of a fraternity party on the elite campus in northern California.

The law prescribed a minimum of two years in state prison for Turner’s offenses, but Persky ordered more limited jail time and probation, which resulted in the then 20-year-old being released after three months.

Persky, who recently said he had no regrets about the case, is the first judge to be recalled by US voters since 1977, and the first in California since 1932. Two women ran to replace Persky, and Cindy Hendrickson, a Stanford graduate herself as well as a local prosecutor with a strong record of prosecuting sex crimes, was declared the winner. She was a vocal supporter of the campaign to recall Persky.

The Stanford case ignited international debates about sexual violence long before the #MeToo movement shone a light on assault, harassment and abuse in a wide range of industries. The case went viral after the victim read a powerful 7,000-word statement in court about rape culture and the trauma she endured in the aftermath of the attack and during the trial.

The judge also received backlash for expressing sympathy to Turner during sentencing, saying: “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.” Turner’s father was also criticised for lamenting that his son was facing consequences for “20 minutes of action”.

Days after the sentencing, Michele Landis Dauber, a Stanford law professor and family friend of the victim, announced the launch of a recall campaign, eventually collecting enough signatures to qualify for the 2018 ballot. The initiative received the backing of celebrity activists, including Rose McGowan and Amber Tamblyn, with supporters casting the recall effort as a movement to fight for survivors of sexual assault and take on a criminal justice system that has long failed victims.

The campaign, however, quickly divided the traditionally liberal Palo Alto and faced intense opposition from a coalition of legal experts, judges, public defenders, criminal justice reformers and some feminists and sexual assault survivors. Critics have argued that, even if they disagreed with Persky’s individual sentencing for Turner, it would set a dangerous precedent to recall a judge based on outrage over a light sentence.

Recall opponents have said that judicial discretion helps defendants receive fair treatment, and that if judges are pressured to issue harsher sentences, it would harm low-income people and people of color disproportionately charged and convicted in US courts.

Advocates for the recall effort analyzed Persky’s old cases, bringing to light other rulings that they said revealed his biases and indifference to female victims. The Guardian interviewed a domestic violence victim upset with her ex-boyfriend’s minor jail sentence in Persky’s courtroom and reported on another case in which the judge was overseeing a much harsher sentence than Turner’s for a Latino sexual assault defendant.

Proponents of Persky, however, have argued that he has been consistent in criminal cases, following probation recommendations and approving plea agreements between defendants and prosecutors.

Hendrickson, as well as being a Stanford graduate, served as a civil trial attorney before she joined the local district attorney’s office.

“We voted today against impunity for high status perpetrators of sexual assault and domestic violence,” Dauber said in a statement on Wednesday. “We voted that sexual violence is serious and it must be taken seriously by our elected officials.”